R.J. McMillen, Dark Moon Walking

Let's be clear: I'm the wrong reader for R.J. McMillen's Dark Moon Walking, even if there's an almost-visible alternate universe where I'd be exactly the right reader. This novel is an eco-adjacent mystery that's firmly set in identifiable spots along the BC coast, so if I was a little better at getting over myself, I'd be able to read this sort of novel a lot less self-consciously.

To calibrate: Dark Moon Walking is far, far more accomplished than some other self-published BC mystery novels, and more accomplished than some that found an actual publisher. I'm curious about the journey implied in the acknowledgments section (first edited by someone at Orca Books, then published by Touchstone, now self-published), but I'm also comfortable leaving those stones unturned.

And I'm not a reader of mysteries (murder or regular), or of detective fiction, so who am I to judge? I'd choose a Stan Evans novel over McMillen, but maybe that's because Stan visited our book club once and was an excellent guest.

Thumbnail: Dan Connor (no, not Dan Conner) has recently quit the police force in his 30s after the death of his wife, and he's ended up restoring a boat and journeying up the Inside Passage across from Vancouver Island. (As it happens, Connor's partner on the force, who we end up dealing with at some length, was named Mike Bryant: no, not that Mike Bryant.) He ends up running into an Indigenous man he'd arrested and seen jailed years before, along with a young woman researching otters, and the three of them end up faced with a complicated web of violence and international evildoing.

There's lots of messing about with boats, which is great, and plenty of time spent navigating and thinking about wind and tide and shelter, which is also great. I've no idea of McMillen's credentials for giving readers this much time in the internal life of an Indigenous man, so that's something I'd worry about.

Like I say, I'm not much for the machinery of mystery fiction: either I see it telegraphed and I don't know why I'm reading, or I don't see it and I feel a bit cheated. On the other hand, with this novel I really did want to see it through, and that's definitely not something I often feel with mystery fiction.

This book's better than it could've been, and it's better than many of its competitors. Mostly, I found it an enjoyable read.  Faint praise and cold comfort, probably, but I did warn you that I struggle to get over myself!